One thing I've learned from backcountry skiing is that triggering an avalanche is nothing to be proud of and nothing to be ashamed about. Our party slogged through a raging river of tourists up to north aspects below the little Matterhorn yesterday and were greeted with wet snow and both natural and human triggered avalanches. Something we expected and prepared for. The new snow was sensitive to triggers, widespread in distribution and around 2 out of 5 on the destructive scale. Rolling a snowball down the boot pack produced the largest pinwheels I've ever seen, with some growing as big as 8 feet before tipping over and breaking into smaller pieces that continued reproducing. Natural wet loose slides were coming down around the basin. No one was caught or carried today, but we were undoubtedly on the upper ends of our collective risk tolerance.. Willfuly exposed in high consequence terrain, with odds very far from our favor.
Slow moving slides triggered by ski/snowboard cuts that did not break above rider and were therefore not especially difficult to avoid, but due to the terrain we were on could have easily produced an unfortunate outcome.
